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Is the Flying Car Just Two Years Away?
From the "We'll believe it when we see it" category comes the Autovolantor -- a car supposedly now in development that is based on the roughly $350,000 Ferrari 599 GTB. It's being developed by a company called Moller International, and here's the thing: it freaking flies.
Apparently, the car will have the ability to take off vertically and hover, with eight powerful thrusters that direct air down for takeoff (then they tilt so the car can fly forward) -- just like the Harrier Jump Jet. The Autovolantor is expected to be able to do 100 mph on the ground, and 150 mph in the air.
Designer Bruce Calkins says the car features a specially designed hybrid fuel and electric system to power the thrusters, creating as much as 800 horsepower. He believes it will be able to fly at altitudes of up to 5,000 feet.
"At first we were very skeptical that we could adapt a ground-vehicle with our technologies and make it work," designer Bruce Calkins told The Telegraph."But the model allowed us to quickly verify that it could in fact be done." He hopes the vehicle's ability to "quick hop out of traffic" will attract funding for the project. Two years, eh? [From: The Telegraph]
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Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsMattNov 3rd 2008 5:59PM
Looks like just a car with wings, where are the fans on this thing? The fans on Moller's other flying cars are huge. Also, it seems horribly inefficient when on the ground.
RichieNov 3rd 2008 7:14PM
Really Matt? It looks like just a car with wings? Imagine that from a flying car. Who would have thought that? Were you hoping for something with an anti gravitational propulsion system? Shields? A transporter? Maybe some photon torpedos? Until you get an engineering degree and can contribute too the cause, lighten up.
MattNov 3rd 2008 8:55PM
Richie, did I run over your dog or something?
Actually, a car with wings is the last thing I would expect from a flying car. Look at Moller's other models, they use massive fans to produce the thrust needed for flight. The description refers to eight thrusters, yet they're seen nowhere on the model. That's what I was questioning. I was more curious about the design than critical of its validity.
Turns out this was announced a couple months ago though, and there is much more information available. The picture shown here is just the wind-tunnel model, which seems to be a die-cast model of the Ferrari with the wing designs added on. So it actually is just a car with wings. Here is a PDF of their presentation of the vehicle, it shows another model with the thrusters added in.
http://www.moller.com/downloads/Autovolantor.pdf
A very interesting concept, but I get the feeling that this is a lot further than 2 years away.
joeomarNov 4th 2008 9:43AM
The designer comments on the vehicle's ability to "quick hop out of traffic". What, are you kidding? The amount of thrust required to lift even a lightweight car would flip over nearby vehicles and trucks, blast any unfortunate motorcycle rider into the next state, tear up the turf, strip trees of their leaves, throw pedestrians through the nearest shopwindow and break the eardrums of everyone within 1000 feet. And it's probably not very "green" either.